Apple's talks with Australia's competition authority today over the little advertising snafu where Cupertino wrongly announced that 4G would work in the country have failed to come to any resolution.
Australian media said that negotiations between the regulator and Apple hadn't reached any agreement. An Australian Competition …

COMMENTS

Can someone explain this to me?

They advertised their product as being 4G capable. It isn't.

What exactly is this discussion about? Surely they should simply be banned from making that claim again and made to compensate anyone who bought the product without knowing that the 4G claim was incorrect.

Why are they having to 'come to an agreement' with anyone? Do Apple decide what the law is or how it's enforced now?

Re: Can someone explain this to me?

The problem is that It is 4G capable. There is working 4G LTE modem inside. Just not compatible with the frequencies currentlydeployed in Australia.

How do you name this, 4G-just not the frequency for this country? I don't know. But given the mess that is LTE frequencies and LTE systems (TD versus FD for example) around the world I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more devices with this problem.

Re: Can someone explain this to me?

The problem is that the people who define what is or isn't 4G, the ITU, moved the goalposts to redefine LTE as 4G (only LTE Advance met the original definition, and no one has that yet), and at the same time redefined HSPA+ to be 4G also. Australia has 42Mbit dual-channel HSPA+, which the iPad can talk to, so technically it IS 4G in Australia.

And more than that...

Yes, technically it is 4G according to the ITU's current definition.

BUT the legislation that the ACCC enforces doesn't care. It cares whether calling it 4G in Australia is misleading or deceptive. If you have a Samsung Galaxy 4G and a Velocity 4G and a Note 4G and a 4G MiFi device and an iPad 4G and all of those things can connect to the (only) network in the country advertised as 4G, EXCEPT the iPad. Then there's a problem. Line all those devices up in a row and the average consumer would expect that the iPad 4G could connect to the advertised 4G network just like those other devices can.

And if the statement is misleading or deceptive, or people (normal, non-technical people) are likely to be misled or deceived, that's a breach of the Trade Practices Act which the ACCC enforces.

And, it's not a matter of it supporting an LTE frequency that Australia doesn't have yet. It's a frequency Australia will NEVER have. The AT&T and Verizon 700MHz bands will NOT be released in Australia in 2013. It'll be other bands in the 700MHz range.

Apple blatantly lied to their customers through their advertising. There is no grey area, there is only Apple behaving inappropriately. Hopefully they get taken to the cleaners for misleading thousands of people intentionally.

Except that Apple never claimed it would run on Australia's 4G network. It was clear from day one that it wouldn't. They even altered their Australian website to clarify something that was already clear.

If I brought a device saying Wifi + 4G, I expect I can take it home and use WiFi + 4G, not have to travel to another country to use the 4G! its like selling a product that needs 240volts in the 110Volt USA, there will be problems...

I think you'll find that the Aussies have a case simply because they are the authority who will be making the decision.

However the fact remains that if you advertise a phone as 4G in a particular country then it is reasonable for the customer to expect that phone to work with the 4G network in that country. Remember a putative reasonable person is a common test in law.

Re: ooops!

Italy has a lot more people and thus is a much larger, probably more lucrative market. Still Apple being the corporate whore it is won't leave money on the table due to principal and will comply eventually after buying off the right regulators/politicians.

What happens when some invents a new wifi - let's call it 802.11xxx - it supports current wifi and it does support HSPA+ which is a 4G network - all this 3.5G, 3.75G - no-one really knows what they all mean. If I remember correctly 3G actually means anything over 200kbit/s.

"They never said WIFI + LTE - they said '4G' and HSPA+ is 4G - end of."

They said 4G. And in the Australia retail marketplace, that means Telstra's LTE Network. No other network in this country has ever been advertised as 4G. All HSPA+ and even DC-HSPA+ networks have only ever been advertised as either 3G, HSPA(+, DC, etc) or by brand names such as NextG.

And the ACCC is not concerned with the technical specs. They're concerned with the expectations of a consumer when they buy the device. And if it says it's 4G, bought from a store in Australia, next to a whole lot of other 4G devices (which do connect to the only badged 4G network in the country) then that customer could reasonably expect the iPad to be making the same claim. They would be wrong. They might (the ACCC believes it does) make the statement misleading or deceptive.

We all acknowledge the mess with naming and calling it 4G in the US is legit. Maybe in parts of Europe too. In any technical journal or article, yep. At retail point of sale in Australia - it's a problem.

Once again, here is a case of Apple being arrogant little fucktards.

It's totally unreasonable to expect your average punter buying an iPad to be aware of the differences between a 4G network overseas and what is marketed as "4G" here. Technical specs can go fuck themselves; all the ACCC cares about is how an average consumer will interpret the claim that the new iPad is "4G" and if that means they would assume it will connect to the network that Telstra is marketing as "4G", then Apple needs to comply with our laws.